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To summarize that column, Doug was a 17-pound potato found in a New Zealand garden by Colin Craig-Brown. Farmer Brown put a hat on Doug, gave him a Facebook page, and hauled him around town on a cart. Doug became an internationally known celebrity potato. The story was beautiful until it wasn't.
Leave it to Jennifer Calfas of the Wall Street Journal to rain on Doug's parade. In a highly sourced recent article, Calfas blew the whistle on Doug. Tragically Doug turns out not to be a potato. He even was performing under an assumed name. The original story said his name was Doug, but it turns out his name is actually spelled Dug. Shame piled up on top of shame, like the Princess and the Pea. After investigating Dug's genetic heritage, the "Guinness Book of World Records" pronounced him a mere "tuber of a gourd," more specifically known as a part of the Cucurbitaceae family. As Colonel Kurtz, a.k.a. Marlon Brandon, once said at the end of "Apocalypse Now," "The horror, the horror…." Dug, like many others who have submitted their DNA to 23 And Me, discovered, to his dismay, that who you think you are can turn out to be who you think you aren't.
After a deep dive into Dug's endoplasmic reticulum by Big Potato, the New Zealand Plant and Food Research Department, Dug was drummed out of the potato family, like Chuck Conners in the old TV western "Branded." Chuck was falsely accused of being the coward of the cavalry and booted out of the Army. Recall the Branded Theme song: Dug was marked as one who ran/ What can you do when you're branded/ And you know you're a man (Or in Dug's case – a fake potato). It is unclear if there was a ceremony in which Dug's fake potato eyes were torn off, like Chuck Conner's epaulets in “Branded." (If you remember "Branded," kindly do not drive at night – you're too old to be on the highway after dark.)
Calfas quotes Dr. Samantha Baldwin saying: "He just wasn't behaving like a potato should. We couldn't identify DNA sequences that are specific to potatoes." Not one to give up on a vegetable mystery, Baldwin sent samples of Dug across the world to the Science & Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA) in Edinburgh, Scotland, for further study and advice. Once a would-be potato gets examined by the SASA, there is no holding back the truth. The SASA has ways of making you talk, which included Dug. SASA determined beyond a reasonable doubt that Dug was no small potato with a giant ego but, in reality, was a gourd.
When Farmer Brown learned the bad news about Dug's parentage, Calfas reports he said: "Initially we were both just gob smacked and quite deflated. … I felt, 'How can they say that about Dug? That's just blasphemy." Brown displayed his adeptness in rebranding Dug, telling the Wall Street Journal: "He's still the world's largest not-a-potato. I refer to him as Dug the Dominator from Down Under. My son said we should call him the 'Gourd Who Thought He Could.'" Dug is presently in Brown's freezer for safekeeping. Dug is chilling in good company. Walt Disney's head is allegedly cryogenically frozen underneath Sleeping Beauty's castle at Disneyland. Baseball Star Ted Williams' head was frozen and last reported resting on a tuna can, waiting for medical science to resuscitate him. If it is good enough for Walt and Ted, it is certainly good enough
for Dug.
If Dug is resuscitated, he will be able to defend his good name and biological identity. If Dug says, he identifies as a potato and not a cucumber, who are we to question him? If Elizabeth Warren identifies as a Native American and Schuyler Bailar, the Harvard swimming champion, identifies as a trans-woman, who is to deny Dug's identification as a potato? Potatoes can make a hash of things. Former Vice President Dan Quayle got into trouble by misspelling potato as 'potatoe.' The ancient Chiffon margarine ad warned people that it is not nice to fool Mother Nature. It is equally dangerous and insensitive to fool a potato into thinking it is a cucumber. Once Dug is unfrozen and restored to health, if Dug says he is a potato and not a cucumber, it is incumbent upon us to wake up, smell the coffee, and treat Dug as a potato.
Would be Tubers of the world, unite! Throw off your chains. Don't listen to the Man. As Ella Fitzgerald almost sang: "If you say potato/ And I say patahto / Let's call the whole thing off." Like a Viking, a potato by any other name would smell as sweet.